A Working Journalist on a Working Journalist Salary, on the Items That Have Been Quietly Edited Out of the Weekly Shop

Reading: Bohiney | The London Prat

HOLLOWAY, LONDON — I have, on every available reading, been quietly editing items out of my weekly Sainsburys shop across the past nine months. The list is short, the items are individually small, and the cumulative cooling of my own discretionary consumption is, in operational terms, substantively underway. By Lowri Griffiths.

The List

The dropped items, in approximately the order I dropped them: cut flowers; the slightly nicer olive oil; magazines that I read once and recycled; the Wednesday cinema ticket; the second bottle of weeknight wine; the artisan bakery bread; the Crouch End brunch outing every fortnight; the new books rather than the library books; the Wagamama dinner once a quarter. The list is not exhaustive. The list is, in operational terms, what the Bank of England cooling-of-demand framework calls success.

The Reflection

I notice the absence of these items more than I noticed the presence. The cumulative effect of three years of rate rises is not principally a single large pain; it is the accumulated subtraction of small pleasures that, individually, are not worth complaining about, but collectively constitute a substantive change in the texture of working life in London.

This is, on every available reading, what the institutional framework was designed to produce. The Guardian has covered the broader pattern. Read more at my author page.

Pairs well with: NewsThump

SOURCE: https://prat.uk/bank-of-england-raises-rates-again-to-punish-anyone-who-enjoyed-a-sandwich/